Sunday, November 12, 2017

HIGH SOCIETY (MGM, 1956) Warner Home Video

One of the
irrefutable high-water marks in MGM's 50’s musicals, producer, Sol Siegel’s
magnificent pastiche in VistaVision, High
Society (1956) is a sophisticated and sparkling, tune-filled, perfectly ‘swell-egant’ affair, brimming with
oodles of chic good taste a la composer Cole Porter; his hit parade of lilting
melodies – including the top-selling romantic ballad ‘True Love’ - delicately counterbalanced with razor-sharp/barb-laden
badinage and pop tunes. Porter’s lyrics do not simply inform character and
story, they excel in glib social commentary on the idle rich. High
Society is a romantic/comedy cocktail, going down like well-aged cabernet
to leave behind the tickling memory of its bubbles. It is a movie that could
have only been made – or rather, remade – in the 1950’s; a glorious
re-envisioning of Philip Barry’s sensational Broadway show, The Philadelphia Story, first made into
a movie under its non-musical namesake by MGM in 1940 and then, starring the
indomitable, Katherine Hepburn. The musical revamp retains a lot of Barry’s
wit, ever so gently tweaking and stream-lining the plot to accommodate Porter’s
score. Gone is that iconic – if politically incorrect – intro, where a
simmering Cary Grant’s C.K. Dexter Haven mashes Hepburn’s saucy socialite into
the foyer carpet with the palm of his hand. We also lose all references to
Dexter’s alcoholism – the crux of the couple’s first marital break-up. And
truth be told, virtually all of the characters reprised in High Society have been considerably softened for this re-telling of
the tale. The Philadelphia Story’s
hoi poloi were rather an unapologetic bitter lot.

Grace Kelly
assumes the role of this morally stoic/emotionally scarred jetsetter, Tracy
Samantha Lord; more silken and less vinegary than Hepburn’s pert protagonist,
but equally as engaging to the eye and ear; warbling a few bars of Porter’s
aforementioned ‘True Love’ with
costar Bing Crosby before moving on to even ‘higher’
society as Princess Grace of Monaco. And Kelly has sex appeal too – a quality
Hepburn arguably lacks. Too bad for the men in Tracy’s life – ex-husband C.K.
Dexter-Haven (Crosby), tabloid journalist, Mike ‘Macaulay’ Connor (Frank
Sinatra) and fiancée, George Kittredge (John Lund) Tracy still wears a chip on
her shoulder to overshadow the heart on her sleeve. “You have a fine mind and a body that does what you tell it to do,” Tracy’s
disenfranchised father, Seth (Sidney Blackmere) coolly tells her at one point, “You have everything you need except the one
essential – an understanding heart. Without it you might just as well be made
of bronze.”

If anything, High Society’s take on female vanity seems
a tad strained; what with repeat references to high priests worshiping virgin
goddesses. George tells Tracy, that after they are married he wants to place
her on a pedestal where he can be permitted such veneration. “But I don’t want to be worshiped,” Tracy
tenderly pleads, “I want to be loved.”
“That goes without saying,” George casually reasons. But does it? At the
crux of Philip Barry’s original masterwork there remains a distance between
Tracy Lord and the world that surrounds her – the original misfit, as it were –
reaching for something that can never be hers while tossing away happiness and
her first marriage with both hands. Ah yes, “She
needs trouble to mature,” Dexter slyly conveys to George while Mike and his
photog’ gal pal, Elizabeth Embry (Celeste Holm) curiously look on. “I’m afraid she can’t count on me for that,”
is George’s brittle reply. But now Dexter plies just a tad more sarcasm as he
insists, “That’s a pity…because I gave
her plenty.” It’s a great line, and one never uttered in The Philadelphia Story.

At the crux of
Tracy’s gnawing uncertainty, perhaps never to find happiness in marriage, is
her own haunted misunderstanding about what has happened to her mother – Seth
strayed from the family commune with a chorus girl. Will such humiliation
happen to her? Men: such pigs! To prevent what she has already misperceived as
the inevitable, Tracy sets up emotional barriers. Ironically, these blockades
fulfill, rather than stave off the prophecy and lead our heroine to bitter
dissatisfaction – first, with Dexter who, in the interim, has become the
‘distinguished’ composer of ‘Choo-Choo
Mama’ – a flashy pop tune. Tracy’s first marriage began in elopement – in
polite circles, a very bad omen and perhaps, a precursor for the annulment. But
where’s the worry now? George is no Dexter; nor does he aspire to Dexter’s
class and it’s probably just as well. For High
Society is rather weighty in its class distinctions. Dexter presumably is
of Tracy’s strata; George, the rising proletariat, and Mike, nobly bringing up
the rear.

The men in High Society are all pawns, rather
bloodless even as they profess to have home fires burning beneath the surface
of their starched white tuxedo shirts. George is too old for Tracy – both in
years and mindset, and, rather effete – someone more interested in the public
presentation of wife and family than exploring real passion for the woman
behind closed doors. Crosby’s C.K. Dexter Haven is a more sensitive lot than
Cary Grant, occasionally prone to the same ‘worship’ and having just written a
musical ode to Tracy’s grace: ‘I Love
You, Samantha’, first vamped in the absurdly lavish foyer of his adjacent
mansion (actually the oft reused and ever-so-slightly redressed Versailles
‘throne room’ set from MGM’s Marie
Antoinette 1938). Apart from ‘True
Love’, Crosby’s ballads are fatherly and quaint rather than erotically
charged. Indeed, Crosby represents the maturity of love on its own terms. Only when Sinatra sings two of the movie’s
most delicious ballads, ‘Mind If I Make
Love to You?’ and ‘You’re
Sensational’ does the screen crackle with a sort of earthy ‘take me, I’m yours’ that escapes – or
rather side-steps entirely the eloquence of Crosby’s more refined
exaltations.

Crosby sings ‘Little One’ – to Tracy’s prepubescent
sister, Caroline (Lydia Reed) who utterly adores him. It’s a strange moment in
the movie, perhaps unintentionally fraught with a whiff of pedophilia. To
Caroline’s query whether Dexter ever intends to marry again, Crosby jokingly
suggests he is waiting for her to grow up.
“Oooo, Dexter. For you I’ll hurry.” Amusedly, Crosby quips, “You’re going to have to.” At 53, Crosby
is decidedly too old to be this Tracy’s suitor – much less her husband – either
the first, or second time around. And yet, the May/December quality of Crosby
and Kelly’s antagonistic byplay works, mostly because of Crosby’s ageless lilt
with a song and dialogue. This leaves
Dexter’s supreme declaration of his unwaning passion to ‘True Love’ – a memory rekindled in flashback that takes us into a
mere moment, behind-the-scenes as it were, when one-time happiness shone on these
ex-newlyweds aboard Dexter’s yacht during their honeymoon. Ah me – bliss. Crosby is given two more
excellent songs: the first, ‘Now You Has
Jazz’; an extraordinary ‘competition’ riff featuring Louis Armstrong and
his band. Crosby and Armstrong have undeniably chemistry from the outset as
best buds and musical co-conspirators in winning Tracy back; Armstrong also
given the film’s plum introductory selection, ‘The High Society Calypso.’ But the other tour de force in the
picture is ‘Did You Evah?’ –
originally written for, but then excised from Porter’s Broadway spectacular, Du Barry Was A Lady. Herein, it is
given to Crosby and Sinatra to bang about as they quietly get snookered on
expensive champagne; Sinatra’s spurned writer already a little worse for the
wear.

Yet, High Society takes Barry’s original
play and does something quite wonderful with it; miraculously retaining just
enough of the playwright’s wit, seamlessly married to Cole Porter’s adroit
sense of self-deprecating humor about the haves and the have not’s. Relocating
the story to Newport, Rhode Island to capitalize on a local jazz festival
(after an initial project proposed by producer, Arthur Freed to focus on the
real festival fell through) and installing one of the greatest of all jazz
musicians – Louis Armstrong, playing himself - as the movie’s éminence grise,
is a stroke of genius. Armstrong not only bookends the triumvirate of Tracy,
Dexter and Mike with his own tongue-in-cheek running commentary about the
quagmire of their feuding and fusing – the story’s central theme (with George
as its ‘fifth wheel’), he is given
plum opportunities to do what ole Satchmo does best; play his trumpet and
warble a tune or two in his trademarked gravely-textured voice.

The arbitrator
of good taste herein remains MGM: the studio with more stars than there ‘were’
in heaven. The production values on High
Society are piece work at best, stitched from the lavishly appointed
entrails and hand-me-downs constructed for other movies. As the bus pulls up to
the exterior of Dexter’s manor house we are actually shown a slightly altered
matted painting of the same approach used in another Grace Kelly vehicle, The Swan (1956). With the exception of a very bumpy overhead
helicopter tracking shot sailing at great heights across the moneyed playground
of Newport – and a few rear-projection inserts thereafter – High Societytakes place almost
exclusively on MGM’s fabled back lot. Knowing this does not really wreck the
mood of the piece because the studio has skillfully created a fictional
facsimile to stand in for the truth. It’s all cardboard and plywood, but it
looks ravishing for the most part; borrowing props from just about every movie
the studio ever made and using the same parquet flooring and ornate wainscoting
created for the aforementioned Marie
Antoinette (seen in countless MGM movies thereafter to suggest the bygone
aristocratic wealth of the robber baron class).

High Societyattains a sort of enforced greatness as a truly
‘swell-egant’ affair not so much because it reaches for, or ever attains any
kind of verisimilitude; rather, because these characters and the actors who
inhabit them seem so perfectly to fit within the artifice. One could no more
imagine Sinatra at home inside an actual austere and dark mahogany-paneled
Newport study than he might look comfortable in tie-dyed khakis and a
kaftan. Yet, he falls right into line in
Uncle Willie’s (Louis Calhern) impossibly gargantuan library, serving
double-duty as a private bar, warbling another vintage Cole Porter melody with
Crosby’s assist; the playfully combative ‘Did
You Evah?’ When Crosby and Sinatra
musically spar, it’s of the highest order, swapping lines like: “Have you heard about dear Blanche – got run
down by an avalanche” or “Have you
heard that Mimsy Starr…got pinched in the Ass-tor bar?” What a swell party
this is, indeed.

And bringing up
the rear, as she so often did, is the marvelous Celeste Holm; her Liz Embry
readily acknowledged as being ‘quite a girl’ by more than one man in her midst,
even though she is never anyone’s first choice for love’s romantic kiss. Holm
is a talent apart from most supporting players who graced MGM’s formidable
roster. In point of fact, she was a 2oth Century-Fox contract player first,
before becoming a free agent. When she engages Sinatra in the duet, ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ she is
every bit his musical/comedic equal – knowing exactly where to place her
emphasis as his compliment. When, as the screenplay implies, though never quite
illustrates, she is rather heartily pinched on the bottom by Uncle Willie in a
turn around the dance floor, Holm’s double-take reaction of indignation suggest
a wound more deeply felt, even as she fluffs it off as mere male machismo run
amuck; overtures made by a middle-aged man who will one day ‘grow up’ to be a juvenile delinquent. Later, when Crosby’s Dexter inquires why she
has failed to land Mike Connor as yet – clearly, the only man for her – Holm’s
world-weary hopeful explains she doesn’t want to get in Mike’s way;
acknowledging that in keeping her distance she may lose him for good. The role
of Elizabeth Embry was originally played in The Philadelphia Story by Ruth Hussey; an actress much closer in
age to James Stewart’s Mike Connor. In
reinventing the role for Holm – who was, in fact, only two years older than
Sinatra but looking at least six to ten years his senior – High Society introduces a curious level of romantic uncertainty
into its mix; one never convincingly resolved in the final moments at Tracy’s
wedding when Liz resolves to snatch up Mike before somebody else does.

Our story opens
with some breathtaking aerial shots of Rhode Island, ever so slightly marred by
jarring second unit shaky camerawork. From this spectacular vista we regress
into the back of a private bus hurtling toward the estate of C.K. Dexter-Haven;
a much-beloved jazz aficionado and patron of the popular arts. Our M.C., Louis
Armstrong warbles the ‘High Society
Calypso’ to, as Satchmo puts it “stop
that weddin’ and ‘tout that match”. Armstrong and his band arrive in style
and are shown by Dexter’s butler (Gordon Richards) into the grand foyer where
Dexter, ever amused and delighted to see them again, encourages the boys to
vamp a little in anticipation of their appearance at the local jazz festival
(which we never see).

Armstrong’s
jazzy riff of ‘I Love You, Samantha’
incurs the ire of Tracy Lord who has been collecting wedding presents in the
family’s solarium while her mother, Margaret (Margalo Gillmore) makes an
inventory of all the gifts and writes the many ‘thank you’ cards. Younger sister, Caroline is up to some petty
larceny, inserting a silver-framed portrait of Dexter into the collection. When
Tracy sees it, she hits the ceiling. But her wrath is stirred to even greater
heights when she recognizes the melody wafting over from the adjacent property.
Charging up the lawn to Dexter’s house, Tracy confronts her ex-husband with an
ultimatum; to ‘go away’ and ‘stay away’ from her wedding. But Dexter
confesses he is still in love with her. “I
still think you have what it takes to become a wonderful woman,” he
suggests. “Thank you,” Tracy
sarcastically replies, “I haven’t the
same high hopes for you,” to which Dexter nonchalantly offers his
gender-bending reply, “I don’t want to
become a wonderful woman.”

Leaving Dexter
to his own accord, Tracy encounters George back home and explains about
Dexter’s return. In the meantime, Uncle Willie telephones the house from the
offices of ‘Spy Magazine’; a notorious rag prone to publishing salacious tidbits
about the wealthy. Their current issue is set to run is a story about Seth
Lord’s infidelities that, as Willie explains, will hit the magazine stands
unless Tracy agrees to have a reporter and photographer cover her pending
nuptials. At first appalled by the suggestion, Tracy reconsiders her options;
electing to stage a spectacle that will ‘stand
their hair on end’. Caroline is
employed as a sort of scatterbrained buffer after Elizabeth Embry and Mike
Connor arrive; playing the piano – badly – and wearing a tutu and toe shoes,
she primes the pair for Tracy’s debut. Thereafter, Tracy toys with Liz and Mike
in particular; suggesting he is much too old to be wasting his time with the
magazine, and then intimating Liz and he are ‘together’ – sexually speaking. “It’s the sort of detail you enjoy
publishing, isn’t it?” Tracy goads Mike before moving on – rather
hilariously – to critique everything from his childhood and upbringing to
English history. “I’m delighted you
came,” she facetiously concludes, “We
have so much cake.”

Introduced to
Margaret Lord, Mike and Liz take a few pictures, inquiring when they will meet
Seth – unknowing, as they are of Seth’s affair, his estrangement from the
family at Tracy’s behest, or the real reason they have been assigned to cover
Tracy’s wedding. Thus, when Uncle Willie arrives for lunch, he is immediately
passed off as Seth Lord by a very nervous Tracy; the moment teeming with resignation
after Seth also makes an impromptu visit, only to be henceforth pawned off on
Mike and Liz as Uncle Willie. Sounds
confusing, but it’s not – really – and very, very funny besides. To further complicate this luncheon, Dexter
makes an appearance, encouraged by Liz to pose for photographs with Tracy and
George. However, when Liz’s lens captures a snapshot of Willie, Liz declaring “To the father of the bride…we’ll use it to
head the article”, Tracy orchestrates a moment of sabotage by breaking the
camera.

Sometime later,
Liz and Mike take inventory of the lavish wedding presents. Dexter presents
Tracy with a model of his yacht, the ‘True
Love’ as his parting gift, affording Tracy the opportunity to daydream
about their past. Through this flashback, we see a couple quite unlike the one
about to tie the knot; Dexter relaxed and Tracy ebullient as she prepares
sandwiches and tomato juice for her groom. The couple serenades one another by
concertina and moonlight; this moment of happiness shattered when George
suddenly appears with a bottle of champagne and two glasses to surprise his
fiancée. Momentarily, Seth and Margaret arrive poolside for a stroll, Seth’s arm
loosely around his wife. It’s as though nothing has happened, and Seth’s
liberties incur Tracy’s wrath. She strikes at him with nail-biting disdain. He
returns the volley with an admonishment of her cruel aloofness. Seth regards
this as Tracy’s greatest failing as a woman, unfit for any man unlucky enough
to find her physically attractive enough to marry.

The emotional
wounds inflicted by this father/daughter confrontation cause Tracy to abandon
her plans for an afternoon swim and take Mike Connor for a ride instead – both
literally and figuratively. Tracy shows Mike the “high cost of being rich”; rows of boarded-up mansions no longer
sustainable because of taxes. She then takes Mike to her Uncle Willie’s
fabulous estate, already in mid-preparations for her co-ed bachelor party. The
mood between these two adversaries warms and they share a drink in Uncle
Willie’s study as Mike confides in Tracy she ought to be wearing an orchid
instead of a chip on her shoulder.
Embarrassed by her obvious attraction to Mike, Tracy departs to get
ready for the party. We return to Dexter’s home, as Louis Armstrong vamps in
the foyer and Dexter warbles his heartfelt ballad ‘I Love You, Samantha’ - the
tune wafting through his open bedroom window and captivating Tracy as she listens
from her own next door.

At Uncle
Willie’s party Liz and Mike are informed of the mix up in identities between
Seth and Willie and the real reason for their being ‘invited’ to cover the
wedding. In reply, Mike gets soused and Tracy becomes quite inebriated, making
a spectacle of herself before George condescendingly exiles her to a nearby
suite to sleep it off. Dexter introduces Newport to jazz and Louis Armstrong
with the infectious and rhythmic ‘Now You
Has Jazz’; then retires to the library where he and Mike continue to drink
and exchange barbs by singing ‘Did You
Evah?’ Mike finds Tracy attempting an escape from her locked room through
an open window. Together, they run away for a midnight swim. When George finds
out, he is livid. But Dexter takes matters into his own hands, knocking Mike
momentarily unconscious before he can explain the incident with any sort of
comprehension that would make sense. The next day, Tracy awakens with a severe
hangover to discover her jewelry missing. Dexter, having found her engagement
ring, bracelet and necklace on a patio cushion the night before, now toys with
Tracy’s cloudy understanding of the previous night’s events. His hints stir
musings that frighten and confuse her. George arrives and threatens to delay or
even call off the wedding; his tide of conceit ebbing after Mike confesses that
his ‘so called affair’ with Tracy consisted of two kisses and a moonlit swim he
will neither deny nor suggest he did not thoroughly enjoy.

George
reconsiders. After all, Tracy’s virtue is in tact. She is still worthy of his
affections. Only now Tracy reveals how it would have made her prouder still if
only George had stood by her despite her indiscretions. Infuriated by this turn
of events and rejection George marches off, leaving Tracy to face her guests
and explain away the situation. Instead, Dexter proposes for a second time and
Tracy, realizing she ought to never have
divorced him in the first place, now vows to make him a good wife this second
time around. With some regret, Mike falls back on accepting Liz as his mate,
while Caroline nudges a hung-over Uncle Willie in the ribs and Louis Armstrong
serenades everyone with his inimitable jazzy rendition of the traditional
wedding march – “End of song. End of
story.”

High Societywas a colossal hit for MGM; partly due to the media
hype surrounding Grace Kelly’s pending marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Incidentally, the engagement ring given to
Kelly by Rainier makes its guest appearance in the movie; a stunning diamond Celeste
Holm joked, needed its own highball. Viewed today, High Society remains vintage MGM movie-making from the 1950’s; a
time of financial entrenchment and upheaval at the studio. With its founding
father, L.B. Mayer already ousted from power, the implosion of his ‘star-making’ system in steep decline,
and the uncertainties of a dwindling audience and shrinking box office creeping
in, High Society clearly punctuated
MGM’s more restrained investment of both time and money on the Hollywood
musical – a genre Metro did not invent, though arguably refined and mined to
its greatest effect for nearly thirty years of screen-celebrating excellence.

Virtually
everything from the story to its sets and props are hand-me-downs from other
studio product. That MGM was able to reinvent Philip Barry’s most celebrated
play as a frothy musical is a testament to their creativity and ability to
unite just the right entourage of talents. Ironically, there is an absence of
dancing in High Society; a
ballad-rich, but production number scant offering. Actually, Cole Porter’s
lyrics do not require happy feet to express what is already clearly noted -
note for note; adroit cynicism and immeasurable charm effortlessly blended
together. With the exception of ‘Did You Evah?’, the score is new and a
million-copy seller. MGM expands the musical repertoire with underpinnings of
Porter’s most famous ballads; ‘I’ve Got
My Mind On You’ and ‘Rosalie’,
superbly orchestrated by MGM’s in-house conductor Johnny Green with an assist
from Conrad Salinger. In the final
analysis, it’s one hell of a show with Crosby, Sinatra and Kelly at the
pinnacle of their powers as entertainers. Within a few short years this sort of
lavishly mounted entertainment would seem as bygone as the studio that spawned
it. Today, High Society retains its
luster as pure escapism. For all of the aforementioned reasons, they don’t come
much finer than this. And they certainly don’t make ‘em like they used to. Pity
that!

With the release
of The Philadelphia Story to Blu-ray
(in a less than perfect offering ported over to Criterion) one would sincerely
hope High Society is bound for
better days in hi-def via the Warner Archive. Because Warner Home Video’s DVD
transfer isn’t up to standards. Photographed by Paul Vogel in Paramount’s
patented VistaVision – a process yielding true motion picture hi-fidelity, none
of it is in evidence on Warner’s current DVD incarnation. Time and money need
to be spent correctly to gussy up this print. What’s here is mediocre to
downright embarrassing. Very little
attempt has been made to color balance and/or color correct this badly worn
negative. When the DVD was released back in 1999, much was made of the fact
that Warner had ‘restored’ the
original silver lettering in the main titles. True enough, these look rather
fabulous as the background effortlessly changes from royal blue, to cranberry
red, then velvety jade green.

But once the
credits fade out, we are treated to a rather disappointing assortment of digital
anomalies, beginning with exceptionally grainy aerial shots of Newport, heavily
speckled in dirt and scratches. Even when we descend into more stable lighting
conditions on the obvious sets, rear projected plates are so badly faded they
almost appear to have been shot in sepia. Color wavers throughout, flesh tones
looking 'piggy pink' and rather garishly orange on occasion. There’s also a
considerable amount of gate weave in the left side of frame, creating some
rather depressingly obvious instability for long stretches during the middle third
of the story. Virtually every stock shot made for exteriors is riddled in a
heavy patina of highly digitized film grain. What a travesty! High Society on DVD never comes close
to replicating the resplendent textures and detail available from vintage VistaVision.

The audio too
lacks sparkle, except in the songs. These have been sourced from restoration
work done much earlier by Scott McQueen for the truly old, out of date, and out
of print, MGM/UA LaserDisc that featured the very first rendering of High Society’s illustrious score in 5.1
stereo. Vintage VistaVision only allowed for mono tracks or what was then
commonly known as Perspecta-Stereo; a
faux stereo effect created from directionalized mono ‘stems’. Finally, Warner Home Video affords us a clumsily
slapped together ‘retrospective’ hosted by the late Celeste Holm. She mostly
glosses over personal impressions and shares some threadbare factoid info that
anyone perusing IMDB could look up for themselves. Two more short subjects and High Society’s badly worn theatrical
trailer round out the extras. Bottom line: we needHigh Society in hi-def. Given the exquisite work done by
Warner on Hitchcock’s North By Northwest
– the only other MGM movie to be photographed in VistaVision – it’s high time High Society was given similar
consideration. We are fast approaching the end of another year and still no
sign of High Society on Blu-ray? Well, did you evah?!?!

About Me

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor.
He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online's The Subtle Tea. He's also has had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.
Last year he finished his first novel and is currently searching for an agent to represent him.
Contact Nick via email at movieman@sympatico.ca